


With This Hand

by vaingloriousactor



Series: Victor and Victoria [2]
Category: Corpse Bride (2005)
Genre: And there's no Emily because fuck y'all, F/M, Fluff, Married life slice of life except victor is dead and y'know what everyone dies, This is meant to be a follow up to Peristeronics fic, Victor Dies, Yea this is Fluff, hand kissing, i went there, this exists in the same world as peristeronics fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 11:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16408010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaingloriousactor/pseuds/vaingloriousactor
Summary: Victor dies but he does not leave. Victoria and their small family together adjust.





	With This Hand

Two years into their marriage, mere weeks following the birth of their first child (a daughter, named Viola), Victor grew ill. Until that point, he was a healthy man, spry though clumsy, at twenty three years of age. It was, in fact, very sudden. With his rapid decline in health came the insistence by his parents he be brought back home to live out his final weeks in the sanctity of his childhood bedroom. Victoria’s parents, meanwhile, argued he should be sent far away. Appalled at such a suggestion, the young family moved to the country.

“The air will do you good,” Victoria told him. They believed the lie for a few days until Victor was too weak to leave the bed.

In his final week, Victoria walked with Viola in her pram in the early morning. A butterfly had perched on their gate and for the first time, she freely cried.

“Please don’t take him from me. Please don’t take him back.” She wept and the butterfly simply fluttered away.

When she came home, Victor was awake, holding a book limply in his lap. He smiled weakly at Victoria and she pressed herself close to his frame.

“I know what lies beyond. I have for a long time now.”

Victor died in mid-afternoon on an otherwise pleasant spring day and Victoria did not leave his side long into the night.

Victor died but he did not leave. He wasn’t even yet buried when he manifested again beside her, as blue and gaunt as the other wife had been, but tangible, and Victoria fell into his arms, crying against his chest.

“I was so scared I would never see you again.” They fell to the floor still embracing. They returned to their bed, shared once more. Victoria drifted off, her cheek to Victor’s chest, tucked agaist his chin, his feet cold and dry against hers. She fell asleep wishing the still heart beneath her ear beat as it had just the day before. When she awoke he was still there, lightly slumbering.

“So this is how it is now.” 

“I’m here.”

“I was so worried you would find…”

He interrupted her sentence with a gentle kiss to the lips.

“No. Only you. I begged them in the underworld to let me return to you. I believe they just wanted to get rid of me a second time.” He chuckled faintly. She kissed him again, nestling closer, wishing for his former warmth, moving in to kiss him. Her lips had barely brushed his own when Viola’s wail pierced through the house and Victor was up faster and with more ease than Victoria had ever seen him exhibit. And soon enough he was back in the hall, bouncing the infant tenderly and the little girl fell back asleep, unaware of any differences. Victoria breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, motioning for Victor to return to the bed. She pressed herself close as  Victor eased back down, Viola still asleep against his chest.

“I’m not leaving either of you.”

 

The first two weeks after Victor’s death moved slowly. Victoria’s parents came by the house often, nagging and bickering as always, their false condolences offered with little compassion. Behind her mourning veil, worn more for societal expectations than genuine sorrow, she would roll her eyes. After all, Victor was in the next room, tending to Viola. Once the downstairs had grown quiet once more, Victoria slumped down on the floor beside Victor, hardly ladylike, lifting the dark veil up. When she turned to smile at him, for the first time, she felt he looked truly dead. He had always been lean with dark rings circling his eyes from boyhood, but it felt different now. As the weeks went by, the changes were subtle until Victoria awoke one morning to find the arms wrapped around her had been replaced with bones, smooth and pale. She shook Victor out of his hazy half-sleep to show him and the furrowed look of concern that crossed his face brought her some ease. Some things were still the same.

That’s what took the most getting used to. Up until that point, Victor and Victoria could pretend that nothing had changed, he was simply a different complexion. Now, unable to hide the fact he was dead, they started talking more openly about the matter. 

It was Victoria’s turn to be patient as he practiced piano, his skeleton fingers clumsily hitting the keys. Victoria watched as he grew frustrated and she sat beside him and took his hand in her own, pressing the bones to her lips.

“The piano isn’t going anywhere, my dear, and neither are you.” She whispered and kissed his cheek. 

He would pick up Viola and bop her nose and she would squeal and giggle just as he did when he still had skin. Victoria still held his hand as they read. But even still, Victor had started to grow distant. He spent days silently looking at his reflection, staring at the way his wedding ring seemed to limply hang on his finger, as it had on Emily. Victoria would come up behind him and wrap her arms around his waist, pressing her lips to his back.

“You’re still the most handsome man I know.” She moved to his front to attempt to partially block his reflection, tucking her head beneath his chin. “My husband.”

“I’m dead. Truly dead. Decaying.” Victor stepped back and looked at her. “I could have avoided it. It didn’t have to happen. Why?”

Victoria didn’t know what to say. It was the first time either had addressed the circumstances surrounding his death and her gnawing suspicions started to rise. 

‘But no,’ she told herself, ‘Now is not the time to question further. Now I have to be there for Victor. Victor first.’

Eventually, she managed to coax him to the garden, sunny but cool, Viola at his feet. Victoria had heard a brief knock and, then, baffled, went to check the front door. There lay a simple box with a card on top. Victoria quickly brought it inside and read the card.

_ For Victor, _

_ You’ve been missed. Have a gift to ease your dead days in the world above. _

_ From, _

_ Your friends beyond _

“What is it?” Victoria had not heard Victor come up behind her and she spun around, dropping the box as she did so. Victoria yelped and apologized, crouching down to pick up the box, but before she could do so, it rumbled beneath her fingertips and out tumbled a small, skeletal dog.

Within moments Scraps (the original) was in Victor’s arms, nuzzling his cheek, and just as he had as a boy, with his canine companion he felt less alone.

  
  


The next two years went by with ease and understanding. Victoria and Victor were used to their circumstances and Victoria had even grown fond of his skeletal arms and fingers. But it was also at that point that Viola started noticing the differences between her father and the fathers of the other neighborhood children, noticed how Victor was seldom present for gatherings and how their family, their quiet, happy unit, was met with stares, disdain, and whispers.

_ Possessed _

_ Driven by the Devil _

_ Bewitched _

And soon enough, by the time she was four years of age, they were secluded, ostracized really. And Viola started asking questions. One afternoon, when Victor sat with her, practicing her letters, her eyes focused more intently on his skeletal hands than ever before, the hands that combed her hair and tucked her quilt up to her chin. And she eyed the skeletal dog asleep at his feet, tail thumping happily against the floor.

“Papa?” She piped up at length and Victor looked up from the lesson book.

“Yes little love?” 

“Why do you look like that? Mama said it’s because you’re dead. But if you’re dead you can’t be here. That’s what Clara said.” Clara, Victor found out, was one of the village girls who rebelliously spoke with Viola.

“Well, yes. I am. I died when you were just a baby. But the dead don’t always disappear forever. A wise scholar helped me so I could stay with you and Mama.” He pulled her back into his lap and, for the time being, the answer was sufficient. But then she kept thinking.

“And Mama? What happens when she dies?” The question made Victor freeze and instinctively he pulled Viola closer.

“I don’t know, Viola. But with hope we’ll all be together always.” He smoothed her tawny hair gently and smiled weakly. She nodded and curled closer still, taking one skeletal hand in both of her peach colored living ones.

 

And then come winter while traveling to the city to visit with Victoria’s parents, the family was struck by another carriage. The living pair died instantly. But only Victor noticed. Any liveliness in his person evaporated as he clutched his wife and child to him. Only when Victoria, as blue as he was now, saw the horror on his face did she understand. The three of them wept freely together beside a hilly pasture.

Together. Properly together. That’s what Victoria kept telling herself. Victor, however, was guilt-stricken, never even daring to let Viola out of his grip.

“Our daughter. I let her die.” Victor choked on his words and Victoria pressed her hand to his cheek.

“But not alone. She is not alone. I am not alone.” And for the first time in many hours Victor looked intently at Victoria and still he saw Victoria, not a shape frighteningly similar to Emily as he had feared, but his wife.

“Victoria. I failed you as a husband.”

“United in death. Together.” She pressed her lips to his. “You have my hand and my heart and my vows.”

They were buried that way too. Victoria and Viola were laid to rest beside Victor. And still they never journeyed to the underworld. They didn’t turn into butterflies either. Instead they traveled through time and the land with a quiet patience, never aging, always pleasant to the living who stumbled upon them as the dead had been to them when they were alive. They never did see Emily again, a fear both Victor and Victoria harbored but never voiced. It was a happy ending, in a certain way, both thought. An existence, or lack thereof, that enabled both (all three of them really, four if you include the dog) to inhabit the world comfortably at last. And, perhaps, at last, to rest peacefully.


End file.
